When it comes to the culture of Hawaii, the ukulele is as much a part of it as a lei, the hula and the cuisine that features delicacies such as poi, kalua pig, spam musubi, poke and loco moco. A musician who has been spreading the sound of the ukulele and its versatility far and wide has been Jake Shimabukuro. The Honolulu native has been doing so since the late ‘90s while adapting to a wide range of styles that includes jazz, blues, funk, folk, rock and classical. On Oct. 5 at the Park Theatre on 848 Park Avenue in Cranston, Shimabukuro will be exhibiting his stellar artistry starting at 8 p.m. It’s also a bit of a preview of a special album he has coming out later this month.

We had a talk about how he became acquainted with the ukulele, the importance it has to the people of Hawaii and that album I just mentioned.

Rob Duguay: Being from Honolulu, what was your musical upbringing like and how did you become first introduced to the ukulele?

Jake Shimabukuro: My mom played and when I was about 4 years old, she sat me down, she taught me a few chords and I just fell in love with it instantly. It was the one thing that really could keep me engaged for hours and hours and hours and I loved playing it. There was something about the sound and the way it made me feel that I think hooked me.

RD: Very cool. Even though the ukulele has Portuguese roots, it’s very much synonymous with Hawaiian culture. As a ukulele player, do you feel like you have a deeper sense of importance where you’re carrying the torch for this instrument and what it means to the people of Hawaii?

JS: There were two Portuguese instruments, one was the machete and the other one was the rajão, and those were the two traditional Portuguese instruments that made their way over to the islands. The rajão was a five-stringed instrument with an interesting re-entrant tuning and the machete was a very tiny four-stringed instrument, so the ukulele is actually a hybrid of the two that was created in Hawaii. It took the size and the amount of strings as the machete, but it took the idea of re-entrant tuning from the rajão, and that’s what became the modern ukulele. The native Hawaiian people learned how to build these instruments, and that’s kind of how the ukulele evolved into what it is today. For me, I was very lucky because of my passion for ukulele.

I’m so blessed that I was born and raised in Hawaii because there were so many great virtuosos of the instrument. Everyone from Eddie Kamae to Ohta-san and of course there was Jesse Kalima, Israel Kamakawiwoʻole and the list goes on and on and on. I was very lucky because I was in a place where I had access to all of this great ukulele music, these players and these virtuosos. That’s really what paved the way for so many of us and it’s what has inspired me my whole life. Now that I get to travel and perform for audiences all over the world, I always want to share this lineage of these great players who paved the way and made the instrument what it is today.

I guess in some sense I feel a little bit of that responsibility to make sure that I keep their legacy alive. I’m also part of that lineage because those were my teachers and the people who inspired me. So much of their playing and teachings are in me as well, so I always think about that and I always keep one or two traditional Hawaiian songs in my set when I do shows. I think it’s very, very important to honor the roots of the instrument and where it comes from, but throughout the set I always try to include as many different styles of music as I possibly can. Different styles of music speak to different people and you always want to try to reach as many people as you can.

I love all styles of music too, it doesn’t really matter what style of music it is. There’s always something I find that I can appreciate.

RD: I like that perspective a lot. Back in 2021, you became part of the National Council on the Arts, which is affiliated with the National Endowment for the Arts, so how has this experience been like for you and how would you describe your specific role in this group?

JS: It was such an honor to be a part of that because it’s a position that the President of the United States nominates. Then the Senate votes on it and all that, so it was truly an honor. I had no idea that I was even being considered for the position, but I’ll tell you, it has been amazing. One of the things that I love so much is that prior to my position on the council, there were so many organizations for artists throughout the country that I wasn’t aware of while living in Hawaii. This opportunity has opened so many doors while introducing me to so many incredible people and organizations who are just doing incredible things with their art and their passion,

Lifting up their community and pouring so much beauty and joy into our country that serves all, it’s absolutely beautiful and it’s inspiring for me as an artist. It inspires collaboration, it inspires new ideas and innovation or it takes ideas that already exist, embraces it and brings it to a whole new community. I’m so grateful for the opportunity and all the experiences that I’ve had so far, I’ve been learning so much. A lot of times when you go into these positions you sometimes think about what you can contribute and what you can bring to the table. Especially in the arts, I find that it’s really an opportunity to open the window so you have a bigger perspective than you had going into it and it’s absolutely been a positive experience for me.

RD: That’s awesome. What are your thoughts on performing at the Park Theatre? Is this going to be your first time performing in Rhode Island?

JS: I’m very excited. I’ve been to Rhode Island before and it has such an incredible community, that area is very artsy and I love it. The last few times I’d been to Rhode Island there were a couple ukulele clubs that got together to have these weekly jam sessions and singalongs. It’s wonderful to see how the ukulele has impacted people all over, but I’m very excited about the show. We’re going to have a new album that’s coming out on October 18 [called “Blues Experience”] and it’s a collaborative record with Mick Fleetwood, who is one of the most iconic blues and rock drummers and one of the founders of Fleetwood Mac.

We did an album together that’s a blues-based record featuring a four-piece band. Everything was recorded live with Michael Grande on keyboards, Jackson Waldhoff on bass and of course Mick Fleetwood on drums. I’m going to be bringing Jackson with me for the show, he’s an amazing musician and we’re going to be doing some of the songs off that record. On the album, we covered some Gary Moore, we did some Jeff Beck, we did some Albert King and some early bluesy Fleetwood Mac stuff that Peter Green recorded. It’s gonna be a fun show and like I said earlier, we try to include a lot of different genres so we’ll be doing some blues tunes and we’ll be doing some rock tunes.

Stuff from The Beatles, Queen and other ones that we add to our set. It’s a little bit of everything, it’s about 50% original music and 50% covers of recognizable tunes. I always like to tell people that our shows are very family oriented, so a lot of times we’ll see kids coming to our shows as well as senior citizens. There’s usually three or four generations of families coming to the shows sometimes and it’s so beautiful so we always try to make sure it’s open to everyone.

RD: With this album that you did with Mick Fleetwood, how will the upcoming show serve as a preview for it?

JS: Unfortunately Mick Fleetwood won’t be with us in Cranston, but we’ll be playing a lot of songs off of the new record. When we do stuff like this, a lot of times the arrangement needs to be changed from the album because we had such a powerful rhythm section. Sometimes that alleviates me from having to play certain chords or melodies, so on the album, it allowed me to play strictly more lead and more single notes and more lead lines, much like the role of an electric guitar player would have in a band setting. That’s always fun, but when we don’t have the drums and the keyboards where it’s just the bass and the ukulele then we have to play more. I have to keep more of a rhythm going and Jackson has to drive the song a little bit more with his bass.

A lot of the time I’ll be covering chords when I play the melodic lines and things like that, so it changes up the feel of the song quite a bit while making it a bit more challenging to play some of the tunes. Especially when you’re trying to keep a shuffle feel going, like a 12 bar blues shuffle. When Mick lays down the shuffle, it’s just incredible. He’s one of those musicians that when he starts playing he makes everybody around him play better and it inspires you to play better because he makes everything feel and sound so good. The energy that he brings is so infectious, so without that element then it pushes Jackson and myself to keep that energy going while we’re playing.

I love challenges like that while figuring out ways to make it work. It’s kind of like a puzzle where you figure out ways to capture the feeling and the essence of what the recording was. This has been kind of new for us, the album hasn’t even come out yet so we just started introducing some of these new songs into the set.